Prophet of the plague

This morning I was reading about that universal human tendency to blame someone else. It's as old as the story of Adam and Eve. Below is something I wrote exactly a month ago. How fast life has changed since then! But I should make clear that, unlike Donald Trump and his entourage who should be ashamed of themselves, I was in no way blaming China for COVID-19 itself or for its spread. The virus happened, and once it happened it was bound to spread, as the whole world has discovered. Modern life is like that.

"Last month I wrote : 'It’s easy to write people off. God never does. He sees beauty - and hope.' Which, I admit, was easy to say. However then you look around and wonder what’s gone wrong because, yes, there may be glimmers of beauty and sparks of hope. But the world’s hardly full of them, to be honest, is it? Think of how poisonous people can be on-line. Think of how much plastic we’ve dumped in the oceans. Think of the horrible destruction our weapons cause all over the world. Think of how many children go hungry and even starve to death. If he’s there, couldn’t have God done a better job of not writing people off? Well, personally, I think he did all he could. It was a sort of two-pronged plan.

Li Wenliang was an eye doctor working in a hospital in central China, who noticed there was a new type of virus among patients there. At end of last year in an online chat he warned some colleagues to tell their families and friends to take precautions. It wasn’t long before he was told to stop blowing the whistle. He went on working and caught the virus. He died in February aged 33. 

Possibly if his warning had been acted on sooner, the coronavirus COVID-19 might have been contained and not become pandemic. Dr Wenliang was like a prophet, not foretelling the future, but warning about the problem. He’s a bit like David Attenborough - or John the Baptist in the Bible giving the diagnosis of the world’s endemic problem, which you might sum up as selfishness. John didn’t have the cure any more than Dr Wenliang had for COVID-19, except ‘Be kind’. The cure was going to come in a couple of years.  

The second strand of God’s revolutionary strategy came at this time of year. It wasn’t a miraculous vaccine but a series of unbelievable events. First the kindest man who ever lived was executed at the age of 33; then he returned to life after a couple of days; best of all, as he’d promised, his Spirit suddenly filled his followers so that they became a community known for their kindness. 

The selfish virus began to be replaced by an infectious love. Being God, however, he didn’t vaccinate everyone like or not, because love can’t be forced. It has to be chosen - like on “Love Island”. I suppose that’s the weak point of God’s plan. If you’re not willing to give up your own interests and embrace the Spirit of Jesus, who brings love, there’s no way he’s going to force it on you. And it’s hard being kind on your own. Sadly, it wasn’t that long before many of his followers seemed to lose the Spirit and that infectious love faded. But he’s still alive and inviting us to choose his way. Love won at Easter."
(First published in Grove Community News, April 2020) 

[Interestingly in the last month we have seen both the grip of selfishness (only moderated by government dictats and laws), as people strip supermarket shelves and ignore social distancing, and the Spirit of selflessness, which is love, as communities started caring for those in need.]